Westinghouse Losing Sponsor, Meeting Suitors

For the first time in 57 years, the administrators of the famed
Westinghouse Science Talent Search are on a quest even more crucial
than discovering the nation's most talented high school scientists and
engineers.

The scholarship program is looking for someone to foot the bill.

With the metamorphosis last month of the Pittsburgh-based
Westinghouse Electric Corp. into New York City-based CBS Corp., the
annual talent search may be facing a future without its longtime
corporate sponsor.

But the president of Science Service, the Washington nonprofit
organization that has administered the program since its inception in
1942, emphasized that the contest is underwritten through 1999. It will
continue without interruption, he said, especially now that other
companies are lining up to sponsor the highly respected
competition.

"Everything is in a 'go' position," Thomas Peter Bennett said last
week.

The talent search has a funding commitment from the Westinghouse
Foundation for this and next year that the CBS Foundation, into which
it was folded, will honor.

Jack Bergen, a senior vice president for corporate relations at the
CBS media conglomerate and a member of that foundation's board, said
there was no chance the contest would fold. "This is an American
institution, and it's a legacy of Westinghouse, and we would not let
that happen," he said.

Other beneficiaries of the defunct Pittsburgh foundation's largess
may have less luck. At least two high schools in that city, including
one that carries the name of the former electrical-equipment
manufacturer, stand to lose financial support. The foundation was the
primary sponsor of science and math enrichment and scholarship programs
at Westinghouse High School.

Westinghouse bought CBS in 1996, and last year the reconfigured
company announced it intended to sell off its industrial and
manufacturing entities by the middle of this year to concentrate on its
media interests. Only last week, for example, CBS Corp. picked up the
rights to broadcast the lucrative American conference games of the
National Football League.

Mr. Bergen said either CBS or one of the spun-off Westinghouse units
could still decide to sponsor the contest, which will give away
$205,000 in college scholarships this year. He said he would like to
see a resolution to the sponsorship issue by March, to coincide with
the arrival in Washington of the talent search's 40 finalists and the
announcement of the 10 scholarship winners.

Mr. Bennett of Science Service agreed that time frame represented "a
very excellent scenario."

Educators Worry

But promises from CBS haven't kept those familiar with the contest
from worrying.

Gerald Wheeler, the executive director of the National Science
Teachers Association in Arlington, Va., said he was disappointed to
learn about the disruption in sponsorship and would reach out to
Science Service to offer help, although it would not be financial.

At New York City's Stuyvesant High School, a perennial producer of
winners in the science contest, Stanley Teitel, the assistant principal
for chemistry and physics, said he was greatly concerned.

"The contest as it exists at the moment," he said, "really does
inspire kids to get into the research field." He said his school even
wrote to filmmaker George Lucas asking if the future-minded creator of
the "Star Wars" trilogy might sponsor it.

For this year at least, the science talent search, which has become
a kind of Holy Grail for an elite cadre of high school students, will
still bear the name "Westinghouse." But as early as next year, Mr.
Bennett said, the contest could carry the name of a new sponsor either
in front of the words "Science Talent Search" or after it.

In recent weeks, officials from Science Service have been meeting
with and courted by many potential corporate sponsors.

Raising the Ante

Mr. Bennett said he is using the transition in sponsors as an
opportunity to think about expanding the activities of the program. It
might include tracking and researching entrants and winners to learn
more about the effects of the program, or starting a talent search in
Europe or Asia.

For the past four or five years, the search has had a flat annual
budget from Westinghouse of about $650,000. But in discussing possible
sponsorship with corporate suitors, Mr. Bennett is upping the ante,
citing a projected annual budget at least $1 million. But, he said,
in-kind contributions could alter that figure.

In addition to a corporate benefactor, Science Service is
considering seeking money from such sources as the federal National
Science Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia, or the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a philanthropy in Chevy Chase, Md.

Science Service officials are scrutinizing potential sponsors, Mr.
Bennett said, and examining such factors as a company's financial
stability, image, research activities, links to science education, and
breadth of interest in science. "All of these things are very
important," Mr. Bennett said.

He would not discuss whether any single company had an inside track
at this point, but indicated his organization was keeping its options
open.

Science Service has some experience with choosing a new corporate
sponsor. Last year, the organization's science and engineering fair
carried a "title sponsor" for the first time in the fair's 49-year
history. The event is now known as the Intel Science and Engineering
Fair after Intel Corp., the Santa Clara, Calif., computer-chip
manufacturer.

Mr. Teitel at Stuyvesant High said it didn't matter who the sponsor
was as long as Science Service continued to run the high-quality
contest it has. If a new sponsor brought deeper pockets to the program,
he said he hoped to see the purse increase for students.

The top prize of a four-year, $40,000 scholarship has remained the
same for several years, he said, and "is really not keeping pace" with
the tuition at the nation's top colleges.

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